Other chapter excerpts

[Aedh]

From Day Three: Morning/Afternoon … [/b]


"What is it?" cried Demjan, raising his scythe. "Who is there?"

"For the love of Christ," came a voice with a German accent, "help me. Help me!"

The young man ran to the tree-line whence he had heard the voice and used the handle of the scythe to beat aside the brush.

"Don't hurt me," pleaded the speaker, a big blonde man in an Austrian lancer’s uniform. He had been handsome, but some attack had scarred him terribly; vicious lacerations covered his neck, face, and hands, bloodying his ripped, dirty jacket and muddy trousers. "My God, my God," he said. "Are you a man? . . . It killed Hird, sir. It killed all of them, all of the dead people--" He looked at Demjan with blue eyes, bright blue crackling with horror and pain. "God, what I have seen. God . . ."

Demjan knelt down. "I will help you," he said. "I am a friend. Let me help you. Would you like something to drink?"

"God in heaven, it leaped on Hird like a panther. How he screamed . . . I had to run. I had to."

Demjan undid his wineskin and put it to the man's lips. "Drink," he ordered, and was obeyed for a mouthful or two.

"Can you get up?" he asked the man. "Can you walk?"

But the Austrian had passed out.

Demjan took him in his arms, staggered upright, and set off toward Alija's house.


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Sarai and Mara took the soldier in, saw to him, fed him, and fixed him up in the back room. All the while Alija sat and stared at the window, and after he had helped bandage the man's wounds Demjan, too, sat down, now and then exchanging smiles with Mara as she wrung out a rag or rinsed a pan.

If love was the violent passion that the sevdalinki verses spoke of, he didn't love her. But if it was a strength and a warmth and a consolation that he felt when he was with her, and an impatience to get back when he was not, then he did love her, and very well.
It was more or less understood that he was to marry her, and there were a couple of questions he had for Alija about that.

"Er--Alija . . ."

"Yes, Demjan?"

He caught Mara looking at him again.

"Never mind. Later."

"Very well," said Alija.

The Schwabe no doubt lay heavily on Alija's mind, and Demjan realized that this was going to involve them with the soldiers. He couldn't see how any good could come of it; on the other hand, he knew that Alija and Sarai would not for a moment have considered any other way.

He sighed. It was all very difficult, and not likely to get any easier before the Schwabes were done.


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Stana was working on the laundry, working hard and aware that she was not really getting much done. Every moment seemed pointless, a waste of precious energy.

She knew that her conscience was bothering her.

She hung the wet wash up, took off her apron, and then sat down for a minute and loosed her hair. Picking up a comb she began to run it slowly, half-dreamily, through her bluish-black tresses; and as she gazed out the window her eyes seemed to pick up a spark of the brilliant noonday sunlight, where it glowed as if it had become a tiny sun of its own.


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The priest Rezać looked up from his desk through the leaded panes of his study window and saw someone enter the sanctuary by the main door. He laid his pen aside, blotted the page he had been writing on, and got up and shrugged on his surplice.

It had been some time since an irregular visitor had come to his little church.

Locking the study door behind him he turned down the hall, out into the portico, and walked around the building in the dusty sunshine.

As he entered the nave it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimness, the single flickering altar-candle. Even the rays of sunlight pouring through the windows seemed muted in that dark place.

He saw his visitor kneeling at the altar rail as if about to receive the Sacrament; and he wore a hussar’s uniform. Very softly he walked down the aisle and was nearly upon him before the soldier turned, rising and brushing off his knees.

A tall, good-looking young fellow, the priest observed, and an officer. He wondered what such a man was doing in this lost little village.

"I'm sorry, Father," the soldier was saying, "but I saw no one around, and as the sanctuary was open--"

"Quite so," said Rezać. "In accordance with the local custom, I may add. I am Father Ante Rezać. May I help you?"

The officer came to his feet and bowed gracefully, cordially. "Captain Janos Vathely, Imperial Hussars."

“I am honoured. What brings you to our little corner of the world, Herr Rittmeister?"

"I am with the patrol," said Vathely. "Up from Fotcha, making sure the country is in order."

The priest lifted a grey eyebrow. "One of the soldiers working with Herr Kommissar von Stadelmeier, certainly?"

"That's it, Father. I am his attaché."

"I had no news of your arrival. Otherwise I might have done something--"

"We're riding pretty fast, Father. Herr Stadelmeier is a man who likes direct information. So we are collecting it for him."

"I know of Herr von Stadelmeier," said the priest. "I believe he is the sort of commissioner the area needs. Firm."

The young officer smiled. "Firm is one way of putting it, Father. We have another word for him. But I must compliment you on your excellent German."

"I grew up with it as a second language after Croatian," said Rezać. "And I did most of my time at Ravenna in advanced studies in it. So tell me, Herr Rittmeister, what sort of direct information are you finding for Herr von Stadelmeier?"

"I suppose it's all right for me to say this, as it'll be public news anyway; but one of the local headmen up this way was murdered a few days ago, together with his family, in a quite brutal and disgusting manner."

"Indeed?" said the priest. "I'm very sorry to hear it. I assume--?"

"Yes," said Vathely. "All the arrangements have been made. The dead man was Orthodox--named Juglesitch."

"Dear Lord," muttered Rezać, crossing himself in three-fingered fashion. "I knew him very well. It will be a great loss to the village. We have very few men who would be his equal."

"What we don't understand is who might have committed such a crime."

Words ran through Rezać's mind: 'But I don't like it, Father. I don't know what's happening.'

He said: "The blood feud is still practiced in these parts, you know. But I can't really think of anyone who owed Knez Dabisav a grudge. Neither the house of Ilić, nor the Leskanić, nor the Bikanić, nor the Vuković carried anything against him. That is the main reason he was elected knez to start with."

"Those being your clans?" asked the hussar.

"The Serbian ones. We also have a family in minor nobility—gospodar is the title--named Savić, but even they . . . no. It just couldn't be," said Rezać.

"Gospodar," repeated Vathely, stroking his enormous moustaches. "The word has a pretty archaic ring to it."

"They date a very long way back between here and the Raška. But they are few, and in any case I don't think they'd breed with the raia. They are some of the last of the real old military aristocracy, who mostly killed each other off during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and keep to farming as a less hazardous pastime. Except for the title and a few half-forgotten stories you couldn't tell them from the peasants themselves nowadays."

"I'm glad to hear it if they really are farming, and luck to them."

"Oh, yes. The present gospodar is a model farmer, very advanced in his methods, but the last one--his brother--was involved in some killing. But that was years ago."

"Kosta Savitch, his name is?"

"Yes, you know of him?"

"We know enough to get along," replied Vathely suavely. "Tell me a little about this killing."

"There isn't much to it. Andrija Savić, the old gospodar, had some kind of running quarrel with a farmer named Bicanić up the valley. No one knew much about it, but five years ago it turned violent--Heaven alone knows over what, probably a sheep or something--and they killed each other. There was no feud started because Bicanić was an Eastern fellow who settled on land acquired from Turks during the 1877 war and all his family were killed in the fight. Altogether a strange matter, and it kept people more tolerant afterwards."

"What was Kosta Savitch's role? Was he in on that?"

"Good question. He wasn't around then, off doing something else, and only came back later. He married Andrija's widow, adopted the children, added one of his own, and has minded his own business over since."

"Sounds queer to me," remarked Vathely. "No wonder they are dying out."

"Not as you might expect. For one thing, the brothers were separated in youth and hardly knew each other. For another, the widow, Stana, had no other qualified match, and the old tradition prescribes the levirate marriage if there is no other way to protect the woman's--and the family's--honour, particularly if she is still of childbearing age. The child of their own is a bit unusual, but all in all, it is a quite respectably viewed situation, and Kosta Savić would have shirked his duty by doing anything else."

"So that didn't spark off this new killing?"

"Kosta Savić may have--probably did have--his private differences with the knez, and there is still some bad feeling over the Bicanić affair. He must defend his brother's memory, after all. But his family and the Uglesić were prijatelji. meaning that there was a special relationship of honour between them. Petar Bicanić did mortally wound his killer, cancelling out any blood-debt. And both Savić and Uglesić were prijatelji to Jovan Ilić."

"The Ilitch of Fotcha?"

"The very man. He is close on a hundred years old now, you know."

"I know of him. And would this--relationship you speak of to Juglesitch be through a marriage between one of Ilitch's granddaughters and a cousin of the knez's?"

"Exactly. Dragan Vuković is the cousin. Nearly every family around here is related to Jovan Ilić by now, and they really constitute a new clan--the Jovanović."

"I can see I shall have to pay him a visit."

"Good luck, Captain. He can be hard to see, as you probably know. But he does cooperate with the authorities in his own circuitous way."

"Thank you, Father. We shall be wanting to talk to you again, no doubt. Either I or Colonel Slavin will be found at the ruined inn."

"Auf wiedersehen, my son," said the priest. "God bless you."

Vathely crossed himself, said a word or two, turned, and went out by the side door.

Father Ante Rezać did not move. "Yusef," he said.

"Yes, Father?"

"I shall want you to check up on the Herr Rittmeister. And do not neglect to meet Herr Oberst Slavin."

"Now, Father?"

"I think we shall have plenty of time," said Father Ante.


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He was obviously full of self-righteous petulance, she saw. Perhaps he had been drinking; at any rate, she had known that this was coming.

"I don't want to know why," he had said. "All I want to know is how. How could you do it to me?"

Stana had looked down at him with pity tugging at her heart; pity and a little impatience.

"I can't do anything to you," she said, "that you haven't already done to yourself. You know things work that way. How many times have you seen some other woman--Dušenka, or Marija, I will mention no last names--and others. Did I ever say a word?"

"No," he admitted. "But that was different. I kept it private. The whole country knows about you and him. People are talking."

"So? Let them talk. What difference does it make?"

"What difference? What about my reputation? What about our son? What do you think will become of him?"

"Don't worry about him. He looks after himself. And as for your precious reputation, it's safe enough. You have Jovan Ilić and the others to defend you. I am the one they are all against, ever since you brought me here. You always did exactly as you pleased. Now I am doing as I please, and when I am gone I won't care what people say."

"I say it is wrong," he said flatly. "What plans I had! What we could have done! . . . I loved you once--God help me, I think I still do, in spite of everything--and so I warn you. Be careful. You are not so high and mighty that I cannot pull you down. I will do it if I have to."

A small cold feeling gripped at her vitals, but she said, "Do what you have to and let the cards fall where they may. I'm not afraid for his sake."

"All right, then," he said with a wolfish smile. "You'd better be sure he loves you as much as you think. Good luck."

And then Andrija Savić turned on his heel and left.



She looked at the comb in her hand, wondering. Odd, she thought, that she could so vividly recall a conversation upon a subject that had never come up between them.

Stana well knew that her memory, more than most people's, was a tricky thing. She could scarcely recall anything simply by trying to; things just had to come of their own. She was a local legend as an herbalist; confronted with an injury or illness she knew exactly which plants would cure it, yet if asked the properties of a given herb she could not say.

She had been to the church the day before yesterday but could not recollect in any detail what it looked like. Asked to describe it she would have to think of something else before the description came. And as for her own life, her memories were good for about twenty-five years back--four or five years before she married Andrija. She could not by any effort recall her childhood or teenage years; in fact, she had no idea how old she was.

On the other hand, she also knew of her reputation for preternatural intelligence, and it was not unfounded. Among other things she had been credited with the ability to read minds, which strictly speaking was not true; she could not perceive other people's thoughts from beneath a poker face. Yet she could always sense what they were trying to do or say, even if they were lying or could not express themselves properly. And she had powers of concentration that seemed to help her to make herself understood to others.

Yet again she oftentimes encountered what could only be described as other people's memories, or dreams--things which she could not relate to her life as she knew it; places she had never seen, people long dead, how to do things she had never learnt to do, could not do. She had no idea how many languages she spoke: she could not recall a word of Turkish, yet for a fact she and Andrija had often spoken Turkish to each other, and how or where she had acquired the peculiar clipped German she spoke with Kosta and the Schwabes was beyond her.

And when she dreamed, or came under sudden pressure . . . strange, sometimes frightening visions overwhelmed her, visions of places and things utterly unlike anything in her experience: vistas of a vast and bizarre city and somehow familiar people who recurred--priests, warriors, servitors--who always addressed her with deferential respect. There were fragments of languages unheard even in polyglot Bosnia, and rare remembrances of certain men she had loved--husbands--and of children, recognizably her children, so vivid that they left her paralyzed, weeping uncontrollably.

And in her nightmares, sometimes, she journeyed through deserts and jungles, fighting great serpents and gigantic tigers and bears, reliving scenes of apocalyptic horror; skies filled with fire, earth-shattering upheavals and floods that washed away whole cities despite all her powers.

All her powers . . . She did now and then suspect that sealed away within her intractable memory, well-guarded by some facet of her eccentric intelligence, lay unused or long-neglected abilities of unspeakable magnitude.

What they could possibly be, or how to use them, she could not begin to guess; nor, she reflected, would it perhaps be over-wise to enquire into. That suspicion, along with the rest of the aberrant vision-memories, were never things that occupied a great deal of thought--she kept busy, especially with the baby, and notwithstanding the turn of events things seemed to be taking these days she loved Kosta and the children very much; she was happy with their home and status, and she would apparently have all she could handle to preserve them.


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Brother Grgur's wagon was halfway across the valley toward Uglesić's farm when he saw the point riders, just arrived there, remount and wheel, spurring their horses in a mad gallop back up the line. He traded glances with Sergeant Deutscher riding beside the wagon; and the NCO dug into his own mount, cantering forward to meet them.

The three of them reined in together, the horses prancing nervously, and the sergeant pointed. One of the riders stooped over in his saddle, giving the reins, and went off at a dash up the column, past the wagon like the wind and off back the way they had come.

The soldier next to Brother Grgur on the box said in Serbian: "I thought I couldn't like this any less. I do now."

"Yes, Svoboda. Something has gone very wrong. We'll soon find out."

The sergeant had ridden ahead, and as the column pulled into the death-stricken farmyard the riders circled around a spot where there were the ashes of a campfire, and Deutscher standing very still, his head uncovered, next to a sprawled body which still wore part of a blue uniform.

Silent to a man, they began to dismount, taking off their pomponed shakos.

Brother Grgur reined the wagon to a halt and climbed down, declining an offered hand. Deutscher looked at him then, with a face like granite.

As the grey-bearded sacristan walked up to him he could see the man was deeply shaken, but the NCO's voice suddenly rang out as if he were on a parade-field.

"Men, Hird is dead. It looks like wolves got him. You can see Vonhof's gear is here, and both weapons." Then he held up a small leather-bound book. "Hird was apparently reading this when he died. Not all of you are religious--I'm not--but Hird was a churchgoer, and I don't think anyone will mind if Brother Grgur says a few words over the body."

Grgur nodded and asked: "His name again?"

"Joachim Hird."

Brother Grgur stepped up, his beard moving a little in the breeze. "Let us pray," he said, and then began to speak in Serbian which the lancer Svoboda translated aloud.

"Heavenly Father, we stand in your sight with the mortal remains of our brother Joachim, and with those of our brother Dabisav Uglesić, and others. But we know that each of them, having shed his earthly body, is with you in Paradise this day. Grant all of them Your eternal peace, as we too trust in Your power and Your Kingdom soon to come. In the name of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen."

There were muttered 'Amens' and the sacristan switched back to German: "If you will repeat in your hearts the words of the General and King, David, in the twenty-second Psalm . . ." He paused while Sergeant Deutscher flipped over the pages of the dead man's Bible and then read:

The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies, thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

There was a moment of silence as Sergeant Deutscher laid a blanket over the body. Then he replaced his headgear. "Becker! Felder!" he barked. "You two mount up. Scout around for traces of Vonhof and the horses, but for God's sake don't go out of sight. Hartlieb! You and Schultz ride back for the village—the Oberst must know of this immediately. Raus!”

The four men went for their horses and he turned to Brother Grgur and asked, "Why did you pray in Serbian?"

The sacristan gazed steadily at the NCO and replied, "Because I do not talk to God in German."

"I guess I can see that." He looked around. "What do you think happened to Vonhof--the other man?"

"If it was wolves, and he went off without his weapon . . ."

"He'd be lost."

The old man nodded. "But if there was some human agency involved, he might well be alive."

"Taken hostage?"

"Possibly."

"He doesn't have any information. But if it's for ransom we'll get the pigs."

"Good luck," Grgur said.

The Austrian began to pull on his gloves. "When I was a boy at the yeshivah, we were taught that the life of a good man is the same value as all Creation . . . The man that lived here was surely as good as any. Whoever killed him and his family must be such as to destroy the whole world."

Brother Grgur did not say anything.


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[Aedh]

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[Aedh]

From Day Three: Night …



Father Ante Rezać, sunk in contemplation of the black-letter volume before him, did not really notice the first knock at his door. At this hour anyone wanting him would normally issue a more peremptory summons. The second knock, however, broke his concentration. He sat back, confounded. "What is it?"

Only another knock replied.

Now positively vexed, the priest rose from his chair marched over to the door, and pulled it open, prepared to rebuke Yusef in quite definite terms.

But there was no mistaking the two-metre height, the thick eyebrows and deep-set, curiously opaque eyes, and the hard mirthless smile forever twisted into a slight sneer by a long scar from ear to lip.

His caller was Andrija Savić.


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The priest took a step or two backward and crossed himself.

"'Evening, Reverend Father," said Andrija Savić in his voice that the priest remembered like distant thunder. "I hope I'm not disturbing you."

"Come in, please," said Rezać. "Sit down."

"Thank you." Andrija Savić walked in and looked around, standing easy, light despite his size, a fistfighter's stance. "How are you keeping yourself these days, Father? Well as ever?"

"Tolerably well, gospodar." Rezać opened a cabinet and brought out a decanter and a tray. "Please, sit down. A drop of schnapps?"

"I'll have some of your German concoction, thank you," said Andrija Savić, seating himself in one of the English armchairs. "In the absence of a fire here, it'll take the chill off my bones."

Father Ante set out the tray, pouring himself a one-finger portion and Andrija a generous dose.
The nobleman knocked it back in one. "Aah, that's the stuff," he observed. "There's none of that where I come from."

"What have you been doing with yourself lately?" enquired Rezać in what he trusted was a casual tone.

"Trying to keep warm. Whoever said that Hell was a place of fiery torments was full of shit," said Andrija Savić sagely. "But he's doubtless been straightened out on the point."

Father Ante refilled his visitor's glass. The dry, punning reference to the practice of impalement, carried out in Bosnia within living memory, had not escaped him.

"How have things been around here?" asked Andrija. "The cause of the true faith been advancing any?"

"For one, your widow has approached me."

Andrija Savić laughed sardonically. "I knew it. Watch yourself or she'll be an abbess shortly."

"I see little danger of that as long as she's married to Kosta."

"Ah, yes, my dear little brother. I'd heard something about that. I expect he's taking good care of her and the kids."

"Demjan is a promising young man. As for Slavica--"

"Not so 'promising,' is she, my dark little flower? No, I see not. By God, she'll grow up into something. She'll be a mankiller."

Ante Rezać felt a very peculiar tightening in his throat, as if his larynx were trying to fold itself up and crawl down his gullet to hide. "She is a prepossessing girl. I suspect she is a secret grief to Kosta."

"Tell me more about my little brother."

"What do you want to hear?" cried Rezać, stung. "You aren't fit to clean his boots. We're not the best of friends, it's true, but he's a far better husband and father than you were."

"Takes care of Stana, does he? That matter to you?"

"As her spiritual advisor--"

"Don't hand me that. You may think you know her, but you don't. You're trying to use her, like I did, but believe me she'll turn the tables on you when she's ready. I know."

"That's none of my business, I'm sure," said the priest coldly.

"I think it is most particularly your business, begging your pardon. You forget that the other world is not without its channels of communication."

"Hell has always been the home of rumours," said Rezać. "But to what do I owe the honour of this call?"

"I've come to take you there."

"And if, begging your pardon, I refuse to go?"

Andrija Savić finished his drink, rose, and went to the door, turning with one hand on the knob, his smile broadening. "Sorry … you don’t get that choice," he said, and flung the door open.

A bitter wind-blast swept the room and Father Ante went to the doorway and looked out. He appeared to be situated on the top of a vast ridge that fell away beneath him in a great drop, sloping for thousands of feet, broken by rifts in the black rock and strewn with heaps of boulders and gravel-falls.

Then there before him stretched a plain, incalculable in its immensity, so far beneath him that it defied his attempt to pick out any features. Such might have been the earth's surface on the eve of creation; it simply was--primordial, illimitable, inconceivable. And then, toward that misty limit of vision which was not a horizon, there seemed to be some cluster of vague outlines, unnaturally smooth and angled--not regular, for their weird triangles and quadrilaterals conformed to no architectural figures he had ever seen.

If they were buildings, no human hands had reared them; yet they could be nothing else, for their damnable outlines were becoming clearer in the haze as the westering sun brightened the region where they lay with orange and silver streaks.

He looked up, and another sun winked down at him, flaring pale blue in the violet sky. He turned around to step back into the room, but it was gone. Only a short stony space separated him from a shadow-filled canyon. On either side of him the ridge wound into the distance, and the wind blew up more harshly, tearing at his flapping cassock and freezing him to the vitals.

He screamed; only the howling wind made mock of the sound, carrying it away into the gulf.

He wondered whether he were dead; and then it struck him that it didn't really make any difference.


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How he traversed that distance is, perhaps, the stuff of other nightmares--if he travelled at all. Suffice it to say that he found himself before the gates of a city.

Proud and mighty that city had been, builded of grey marble and basalt and jasper and orichalc, suspending immense domes and sending slim writhing spires against the sky that burned with sunfire even as shadows flowed in its swarming streets. Wide as a cathedral's nave its gates yawned between the sheer walls; hundreds of feet above, a dizzying portal arch had been flung across the gulf by some demonic architect. Delicate as a spider-web it floated above the gateway, yet it had endured for countless ages.

For the city had fallen, with a fall that surpassed Babylon or Tarshish or fabled Poseidonis. No earthquake had wracked its massive foundations; no flood had swept away the noontide of its grandeur; no conqueror, surely, had broken and burned it with fire. Yet it lay dead, sere and nameless under the cold brilliant light of twin suns.

He walked onward through the great gate, the eternal wind snapping his garments, shifting the fine black sand that lay underfoot and blasting on through the deserted streets. Then, turning, he observed the gateway; set in the wind-worn stone were enormous wrought-adamantine hinge plates, each the size of a barge, that showed no sign of use.

Either the gates had proven mightier even than the power of the Cyclopean builders to execute, or the arrogance of the city had been such that they needed only to suggest what they were capable of.

Thoroughly unnerved, he went on; for such as had erected this forgotten metropolis might even yet not be utterly annihilated; an awareness, a remembrance, might still linger in some inconceivably attenuated way. How, indeed, could their creation stand if no trace of their seed existed? for else how could they create? Or yet having mastered the possibilities of this world could they have passed on, grown, as the child leaves his cradle?

But might not a man, on occasion, revisit his cradle, entertaining memories of his childhood?

His overheated fancy now enflamed by such spectres, his walk burst into a run; and he dashed down the dead city's avenue in a frenzy, uttering unheard cries in fear of whatever wayward idea seized him. For the city had proven to him beyond all doubt that all possibilities are equal, and reality the plaything of vision.


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And thus at last he came to the Temple. That it was the Temple was a matter of simple observation, for the basalt and granite and onyx mass that reared above him could be nothing else. The sheer face of two double towers confronted him, their tops lost to view beyond the ascent of their sides, while far overhead their flying buttresses leaped out into the surrounding buildings. Behind those towers, further yet, loomed a dome so vast that he did not need to see; he could feel its gigantic presence, as if by gravitational attraction.

Whatever gods the godlike builders had acknowledged had here received their due in sacrifice.

He raised his head looking at the massive steps that rose before him like the cataract of a mighty river, and was acutely conscious of a choice. He could, truly, turn his back upon the edifice and walk away from the challenge it implied. But where to? And what for?
If the meaning of his exile were to be found at all, it would be within the Temple. As a priest he could not but accept that. Slowly, as if drawn on the tide, he began to ascend. Each step was knee-high and as he rose and drew nearer to the beetling architrave that overhung the great double doorway he began to perspire despite the biting cold.

He had to pause for breath once or twice, but when at last he reached the top he turned. Even from the main level, with the central portals looming behind him in shadow, he was above some of the neighbouring rooftops, and the higher towers of the perimeter could be seen, the great stairs falling away before him like a landslide.

Again he turned about and approached the twofold archway, passing in by one side whose very supporting columns stood on the pedestal higher than his head, fully as wide as a village street where they joined with the mountainous stonework of the walls.

Once having passed beneath the soaring entry arches, the floor beyond began to break upon his view as he went through a dim narthex; and, the interior colonnade behind him, he emerged into the central area.

Fully one square mile it stretched before him, filled with dusty light streaming in from the manifold windows on which the vast dome vaulted above, seemingly floating upon a haze of cold radiance. How high the apex rested he could not guess if he wanted to, for dust and shadow and a network of light rays from the dome's drumwork obscured the uppermost reaches. Around him the square space receded to plain colonnades on either side; and at the far end lay a wide dais set before a shallow niche. In the centre of the niche was something too small for him to distinguish at that distance.

But even though he could not distinguish the thing, he did not feel free to approach; his mind seemed entangled by some numinous force that emanated all around him. To move any closer, he sensed, would drain away all his vitality, endangering the very seat of his will. Yet whatever eidolon squatted on the dais must symbolize the laws which made and ordained this place, and which had in some terrifyingly obscure manner sucked him into their workings. Consequently a true and complete understanding, an assimilation, was required of him to pass beyond.

Whether to God or to whichever nameless destiny had brought him so far, an unquestioning, unhesitating commitment was clearly required; the choice, he realized, had been made long ago, and he had made it.

Relentlessly, almost mechanically, he began to cross that immense floor. And by the time he recognized the high seat, he was not really surprised to recognize its occupant.

The figure wore a simple black robe with a twelve-pointed star on a chain about its collar, and under the shock of white hair the inhumanly handsome face wore the arch almost-smile on its dark lips that he knew from his nightmares.

Though his mind screamed protest, he knelt.

"Good evening, bold dreamer," said the figure gravely. "I see that you have brought your mind this time. See that you don't lose it. You may rise."

He rose, rage and a hundred questions tearing at him, and stood with his own face impassive as he had been trained. The figure continued to search him out with the gaze of its colourless eyes. At last, he said: "Leave to speak."

"Granted."

"Why have I been summoned here?"

"You were not summoned."

"No?"

"You came of your own volition, and, I may say, displayed great courage and ingenuity in making your way."

"But . . ." He vaguely remembered some visitor to his room, and a monstrous revelation; but his memory refused to admit of details. "What place is this?"

"This is Carcosa which God smote, the city of forgotten dreams."

"How did it fall?"

"As I said."

"You are not of this city?"

"I ruled in it, once."

"Who then are you?"

"That would, of course, depend upon who you are."

He pondered.

"I dreamed once, that I was a man, living in a distant and troubled age, a priest of a god who had died but yet was not dead. What sort of a man I was I do not clearly remember; but I was lonely and obsessed with a woman, who divided the commitment which I owed wholly to the god by virtue of certain vows."

"The question of one's δάιμον, animae separatae, is an exceedingly difficult matter, compounded by the nature of words at the medium of communication; for such reason Agrippa, Trismegistus, and the rest used signs and symbols. I wish that you had left your mind behind, but naturally without it you should not have been able to pose the question in the first place. Mind and language are so much each other's props that for discussion we may say that they are interchangeable. Perhaps if your mind were more primitive, relying less on a highly analytical structure of semantics, and more upon inflexion and modulation, you would actually be better equipped for such a consideration."

"You mean that being Croatian presupposes a certain relationship between my ego and my soul?"

"Prescribes certain limits, I would say. There is much room for individual variation in development; no one is ever perfectly true to the norms. But the norms do exist, as a corollary of the limits. Nevertheless, some development along constructive lines is possible."

"Along the idea of linguistic analysis?"

"Nothing so crude, my dear holy man. But if you have half the intelligence for which I grant you credit, you will recognize that the circumstances under which your mind develops will also determine your perspectives on your soul, and therefore also on the world your soul inhabits."

"Does my soul inhabit a world?"

"Does it? My little holy man, it ranges from world to world in a universe you hardly suspect. From certain books you may think you know it, but the men who wrote them were after all only men like yourself."

"And you, what defines your limits?"

"I see no reason in attempting to explain my limits to you who do not know your own."

"I would know who or what you are, and why you haunt me," he cried in a voice that sent echoes a-stirring in that enormous space. "You have passed in my thoughts by day and my dreams by night. You are slowly killing people I know, and your influence is causing others to murder each other. Why?"

"It is, as is all else, the quest for life."

"You have no right to live at such an expense."

"How strangely ignorant you are for a priest! Does not your Cardanus put the point: 'elementa sunt plantis elementum, animalibus plantae, hominibus animalia, erunt et homines aliis, non autem diis; nimis enim remota est eorum natura a nostra; qua propter daemonibus'?"

"For men to feed upon animals and plants is not the same thing at all. God commanded that men should do so. For you to usurp that mandate, to take the soul from men, the bene esse, is monstrous."

"Then revive if you can your dead god so he can put a stop to it. Does not even Saint Bernard say: 'modico adhus tempore sinitur malignari'? He allows it--not because He is forbearing, nor because He is merciful--but because He is dead."

"You lie, your mouth spews filth, blasphemy--for He has arisen. He lives! Did you never hear the angelic shout proclaiming His resurrection, the Exultate, domine?"

"Show me your angels too, then, that I may spit on them. Their voice has never been heard in this abhorrèd place. You yourself labour alone in a land almost as lost as this, exiled from advancement in your Church. Are the people not outcasts, heretics; Patarenes, Cathars, unregenerate Mussulmen cut off from the body of the Faithful? No, they need no mercy from your dead god, nor hosannas from your angels. The chief priests of your dead god have warred against them since the dawn of history, but have never conquered them in their soul. They have nothing, nothing but their pride; but with it they have built a glorious past, and face their destiny unafraid."

"You lie again, for their past has been anything but glorious. Their history is of fear and misery and degradation under dahis and pashas. It is hope that they have never known, not fear. Ignorance and superstition crush them now; but when they gain hope through knowledge, their Easter will come at last. God will arise with them as surely as He did from Joseph's tomb. They need God, though they know Him not. It is you they do not need."

"Fine, brave words, priest. But forty generations of war dead cry out against your god's kindly missionaries. A few of their wretched descendants file into your church and drop an obol into the poor box--while who is poorer than they? You, even, you, I own, body and soul. Do you deny it?"

"What?"

"Think back, years ago, to when Stana Malević needed a dowry to marry the gospodar. Who supplied her dowry money, and in exchange for what, and whence he obtained it? And later, when she became estranged from him . . . is your memory so short?"

"How could I forget?" he said bitterly. "I loved her. Or I thought I did. But in her way she stood by me."

"Let us not delve too deeply into past mistakes, little holy man. But I will use it to have a wager on."

"Speak."

"Very well. If you can save a soul for your dead god--yes, even one out of all your mission area--I will return yours to you. Your dreams will henceforth be your own, and the grave will bring you final peace. Do we have the bet?"

"How could my conscience ever be free? The past is not yours to change. And yet what human ever got a bargain from you? All matters are up to God. If He sees fit to grant me forgiveness, in His infinite mercy, then I am beyond your power. And if He does not, then I am yours by His will, no matter what you promise. No, I believe I will decline the wager, thank you."

"Do as you like. However, once my hand is extended, I do not withdraw it. My wager stands, if you should change your mind."

"Thank you." He gazed into the terrible face for a few moments; the colourless eyes returned the scrutiny, and the half-smile returned to the hard lips.

At last, he said, "You are evil, a creature of corruption, lies and death; but let none say that you are ungracious."

"A compliment from the heart, truly! Go your ways in health, holy man; I cannot wish you happiness. We shall meet again."

He took a last long look and knelt; and when he raised his head he was alone.


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[Aedh]

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[Aedh]

From Day Four: Night …[/b]




The wind was rising as the priest Rezać arrived at the burial-ground, though the rain, luckily, had largely ceased. He saw the ridge vaguely outlined against the cloudy night sky, and the rays of a shuttered lantern lifted once, twice; it was Brother Grgur the sacristan waiting for him.

"Merhaba, Grgur," greeted the priest. "You've not been long, I trust?"

"Not long," replied the stocky shadow, and metal clinked upon metal. "I have a mattock and a shovel."

"I was not sure, so I'm having some brought," said Rezać. In reply to the sacristan’s silence he continued: "There is an Austrian officer coming with one of his men to help. At my invitation."

The sacristan thrust his spade into the ground with a sudden crunch. "Schwabes, Reverend Father?" he growled.

"Nothing official--purely a personal interest--"

"Personal?! Since when does any Schwabe have any personal affair anywhere in this country?"

"It's this officer's men who were lost. He has a right to see this thing."

"What the Schwabes' rights are is beside the point. You stood out there today raving like a lunatic about visions of evil, and accusing Andrija Savić--on whom be peace--and the gospodar Kosta Savić of all sorts of horrible crimes. I'm only here because you promised you'd keep your trap shut--"
"Grgur--"

"--if Andrija proved to be no vulkodlak. Whether he is or no has nothing to do with the Schwabes, who are quite capable of sticking up for themselves, thank you! Let them take care of their own people. We have our hands full with ours."

"Grgur, you surely don't object to witnesses? Why, if I'm wrong? Or do you believe I'm right?"

"Don't treat me like a child," shot back Grgur. "Reverend Father, you gave your word--"

"Good, Grgur, fine. You want out? Go. The Austrians and I will take care of it ourselves."

The moon showed for a moment between two scudding clouds, and Grgur caught his rasping breath and looked up at it. Then he said: "Right. It shouldn't be done at all, and you know that very well. But he was Orthodox, a Serb, so it's my duty to be here even though the whole business stinks. And it'll stink even more tomorrow when I get asked--as I will--why the grave has been opened. There is to be an odbor here tomorrow, if you recall."

"What'll you say, Grgur?"

"What's that to you?" said the sacristan venomously, producing a pistol from under his coat. "You're obviously working on the Schwabes to whip up war in the valley, and if I thought shooting you here and now would prevent it, I'd do it cheerfully."

"But it's not that easy, is it?" asked the priest.

"No, admitted Grgur, looking down at the pistol and then putting it away. "But what you're doing will get you killed. Not by me, maybe not even by the gospodar, but somebody will kill you. Don't you know that?"

"It's not in my hands," said the priest Rezać. "It's in God's hands now."

"God's hands?" cried the sacristan. "Blasphemy! How dare you blame Our Lord for your malignant scheming?!"

"Blame me if you like, Grgur," said the priest hollowly as another lantern approached, making its uncertain way toward them. "Shoot me now or anytime if it will make you feel better. No man can fight God's will."

"Ako, ako," rejoined Grgur, watching the light. "God's will. If He has written your name on a bullet, it will not vanish tonight." And Rezać spoke out in Hungarian, giving a greeting to the two figures approaching.



"I'm glad you could bring him," Rezać told Vathely, speaking Hungarian as they rested, nodding toward the hole where the soldier and the sacristan were digging.

"Starkmann's a good man," replied the hussar. "Steady, reliable, and no more imagination than a plate of goulash. If he were nervous you’d know you were really and truly on to something weird."

"I hope not," said the priest. "When he was buried, the man in this grave was dead beyond any possibility of doubt, if you apprehend me. We are simply checking the condition of the body."

"But you said this was a case--"

"I said a suspected case. Suspected by the man with the pick there," said the priest, knowing that Grgur, should he be eavesdropping, could not follow their spoken Magyar. "This was his idea, but no one more than he is praying the idea is wrong. As I said, we are verifying a fact, that's all."

"Well," said the hussar, "it's good spook-weather, certainly," and the priest nodded--either in agreement or to Brother Grgur, who was peering up over the edge of the hole.

"That ground's solid, as you could testify." Grgur said in Serbian. "No traffic in and out of there. Quiet as a grave." He smiled mirthlessly in the dark. "You'd stand to lose your wager, wouldn't you--if you'd kept to it?"

"We will see what we'll see," answered the priest.

"Yes, and very soon," said the sacristan, and he'd hardly spoken when the soldier called out, yanking them all round to face the grave; for a moment in the wildly flaring lanternlight he resembled the revenant they were looking for.


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A splatter of rain ran through the trees and Kosta Savić cursed and pulled his greatcoat tighter with one hand while keeping the horse's halter in the other.

His body ached in every joint, a half-dozen wounds stung him under his woollen shirt, and his head buzzed with fatigue; and now belike it would rain on him all over again. Yet his job could not be postponed. If he got Yusef back alive, the Turk would be disgraced, and perhaps Rezać with him. If not, the disgrace would rebound upon him and his family.

Of all the Schwabes, he thought, that Herr Oberst Slavin would perhaps understand.

The Schwabes had their Iron Tsar, old Franca Iosif, to rule them with his iron laws--they had great steel factories, whose works made streams of gold to flow for their owners. These mere men of metal; what could they possibly understand of the flower-garlands of Saint George's Eve, or of the Mother of the Rye and her libation, or of Kraljević Marko's wonderful horse--let alone the baffling spiritual forces which coalesced around the curse of a clan-chief?

The wind mounted to a rush, and the mare whickered, trembling a bit under her terrible burden.

True, he had killed his father's pobrat, the knez Dabisav Uglesić. Why . . . he was still not sure, but it had been a monstrous act, and he would pay the price. What business was it of the priest's--or of these Schwabes'?

He lay a steadying hand on the horse's flank as they entered a rocky defile and started to descend. He moved his hand up to feel the Turk's bulk, and slapped it.

"Eh, Turk, what’d’ you say? Still alive, are you?" he muttered. A twitch in some muscle was his only answer.

That Oberst was a decent fellow, he thought. A little too much of a talker, perhaps, but almost a regular Serb inside that blue uniform.

It would be a pity to have to kill him.


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Soon three men were looking down five feet of flinty soil to the outline of the coffin's lid; no more could be hewed out in the brief time they had. Brother Grgur handed a pry-bar down to Vathely, who had to stand at one end of the wooden casket while trying to loosen the fastening at the other. But with a few groans heard over the rising gale the bronze nails came loose, and at last, lying on the ground and reaching down with the pick and bar, they were able to lift the lid and turn it back. Brother Grgur and the soldier Starkmann held the lanterns down, and they all looked.

The body of Andrija Savić lay facing them, resplendent in embroidered finery, glittering with golden thread; under his folded arms the wavering light played along the blade of his legendary twenty-pound sabre, and flickered over a face all too familiar to the two churchmen. It had hardened, falling into iron lines drawn tight over the massive bones of the skull. The great scar had folded in, drawing the lip up into a shadow of the well-remembered sneer, and the eyelids lay chillingly open and void, as if to stare even the worms down to defiance.

They looked for a full minute or more, all silent until Vathely murmured, "Groß Gott . . . think of him alive."

"He's dead, all right," said Grgur in curt Serbian. "You see, Reverend Father? Gone to whatever frozen circle of Hell would have him." He extended a shovel handle, which clunked solidly against a forearm. "This is no warm, blood-sated night-walker."

"But he is a little too well-preserved, is he not? I think the forces of Nature could do with a bit of a helping hand."

The sacristan slipped a hand inside his jacket and asked in Serbian, "What have you got in mind?"

"Nothing not sanctioned by the holy Orthodox Church," rejoined the priest. "A little holy water, a candle in the lantern, a few words--and a small stake. Just to make sure."

"I've nothing more to say," said Grgur, "but that the gospodar will make sure of you. You know that."

"Well, you just run along and tell him, then, now that the bargain's been broken anyway," said the priest, kneeling down and producing a few things from his cloak. Grgur knelt down beside him, and pushed the covered muzzle of the pistol smartly into the priest's right kidney.

"Yes," Grgur said in German, "let us pray for the soul of the dead man." And as Vathely and Starkmann doffed their caps, Grgur began in Serbian, "Move a muscle, Reverend Father, and you're a dead man. O Lord, our heavenly Father . . . " And during the prayer he did not neglect to pick up Rezać’s stake and tuck it into his own belt.

At the end of the prayer, Rezać said in Serbian, as if adding a blessing, "God help you, Grgur, you'll regret this."

"Proverbs, chapter twenty-six, verse five," replied Grgur. "'Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.'" Then, rising, in German, "Thank you, gentlemen, we need not keep you much longer."

"What's the business with the piece of wood?" enquired Vathely.

"An old Bosnian custom," replied Grgur. "It stands for bad luck."

"Interesting," said Vathely. "And what do you do with it?
"
"This," said Grgur, and threw it as far away into the scrub as he could.


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Slavin opened his eyes and he, too, listened to the rush of the wind over the crumbling roof of the han.

He had no idea of the time; it seemed as though he had been tossing and turning for hours, listening to Stadelmeier's snoring and an occasional scrape and clink as the guard turned about.

He had always been a seeker. As a youth, his family had been sufficiently well-off to disincline him from work, but not nearly so much as to free him from the necessity of it. This situation had procured him an excellent classical education without affording him the leisure with which alone it could be put to proper use. In these circumstances he could have been a teacher, had his resulting disillusionment not extended within the classroom; or a priest, had it not also extended to God. Hence, after some years of drifting among jobs for which either experience or education unfitted him, and having begun a family--which precipitated a financial squeeze that his wife had never subsequently forgiven or forgotten--he had wound up as an army officer. In this, as before, he had not found a proper place. He did have, however, the company of other men who had likewise found themselves useless for anything else; frequent changes of air and scenery; and a steady paycheck, which would enable his sons to be raised in much the same manner as he himself had been.

This was by no means the first time Slavin had taken stock of his life. He did it often when unable to sleep, not that it served to induce slumber; usually the opposite. This time was usual.

He threw the covers back and sat up on his cot, and after a second he shuddered as the chilly night air penetrated his long underwear as he knew it would. He soaked in the cold for a moment, then rolled gingerly out of the cot and went over and looked out of the narrow casement into the night sky.

The wind had slackened briefly, and in a rift between flying rain-clouds he saw two faint stars.

His lack of illusions extended beyond army duty and God even to include himself. Fully aware that time spent worrying about himself was wasted, and that consequent worry about wasted time only wasted more time, he tried to reach out toward those twin pinpricks of alien light.

He smiled bitterly. Something to believe in; two tiny stars, hardly visible, yet they would outlast him, and the Empire, and human civilisation.

And again a familiar feeling, that if life were so brief and complex, it must have been set up by someone intentionally--by someone with a rather sick sense of humour. Either that, or it came of a chance interplay of electrochemical forces, having no more point to it than an idiot's babbling, or the meeting of parallel lines at infinity. He had discerned this choice as a younger man, and had considered suicide; but, given the first option, he had stuck around with the idea that he might get to the punch line. And if not, given the second, it made no difference anyway; nothing did.

His wife was dead. Sure, there were the children, but they'd do better out of his insurance money. So he'd taken duty in this hostile land, and kept at it long after he could have left, despite what he’d told the Herr Kommissar. Bullets flew and disease was rampant; for him, fate would decide. Certainly he'd buried more men than he could remember.

He had once drawn some consolation from the fact that nobody gave a damn. But as he leaned there in the window, and felt the wind whip about and lash a few raindrops in his face, he realized what an egoist he had been.

What business had he, writing off the world?

And then he thought back again, to a fact he had all but forgotten because no one had ever asked.

He had met Andrija Savić. Once, briefly; but he had met the man.



The survey patrol had been riding out the lines on a bad map section late one dusty afternoon [in 1903—ed.] when they had come upon a cloaked horseman sitting quietly on his mount in the turn of a road. Slavin had halted the group, and greeted the man in Serbian.

"Herr Oberst von Slavin, is it?" the rider had asked in German.

"Just Slavin," he'd said. "I may be a Schwabe to you, but I'm no Austrian . . . and you have the advantage of me, sir."

There was a fractional pause. "Where d'you plan on running the boundary?"

Slavin looked hard at the figure, taking in the icy blue eyes, the thunder-scarred countenance, and the magnificent beast it rode. "Wherever it belongs," he said carefully.

The man spit between his teeth. "You talk like a man and a Serb, despite your toy uniform, so I’ll give you some good advice.” The leather creaked as he turned in the saddle. “You’re a bit far west right now. You'll want to ride back to Vikoč tonight, make camp. Tomorrow, head south to the ridge above the Čehotina ravine. Follow that southeast to the snow line above Šuplja Stijena, then south-southwest across the valley to the Tara river and then downstream to Šćepan Polje. That's where it belongs. Anything east of that is held by people who had it from Prince Nikola, and it’ll spare you some future headaches."

"And to whom shall I say we're indebted for this advice?"

"Someone who knows what the hell he's talking about," replied the horseman, nudging his mount's flank. "But if you really do want to get to Foča tonight, you'll have to turn around and then bear left. The road's marked wrong on your map." And with that the stranger had reined out and gone off at a trot.

Slavin reflected. At the time, he figured, Andrija Savić had had less than three months to live. No doubt, as they said, he had been an ill-starred troublemaker, a menace, an Ishmael. Yet he had also been gospodar, and in the real old style, a larger-than-life hero; a two-fisted, hard-headed brawler--not a brooding manslayer like his brother.

The wind came up again, and all at once he shivered and turned away.

A dripping, dishevelled man stood in the doorway.

Slavin peered into the gloom, not quite sure what to do or say, when the man raised his head and looked at him with staring eyes, flat blue eyes as if coloured by a terrified child.

He saw the flying hair and said, "Gospodar?"

The queer eyes shined like fish scales in the darkness. "I--I . . ."

"Guard!" shouted the colonel.

Boots trampled in the stone-lined corridor, and the officer blinked as a lantern was held up to his vision.

"Sir? What is it, sir?"

Slavin blinked again. "Where--where is he?"

"Where's who, sir?"

He realized his mouth was open, and closed it. "Nothing . . . Blimenthal, isn't it?"

"Jawohl, Herr Oberst."

"You didn't see anyone, did you, Blimenthal?"

"Nein, Herr Oberst."

"No . . . Good job, Blimenthal. Alert."

"Everything alright, sir?"

"Yes, thanks, Blimenthal. Fine. Carry on." Slavin returned the soldier's salute, and when the man had gone he leaned back against the wall and slid down on his back until he was sitting on the floor with his knees drawn up; and then he wrapped his arms around them and put his head down.


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[Aedh]

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[Aedh]

From Day Five: Night …



In an upper-story room in Ilija Vuletić's house, old Jovan Ilić sat, staring long into the small orange flame of an oil lamp on a table. He was propped up in a chair, wrapped in blankets. This was his way, for he never could sleep lying down. Tonight he could not sleep at all. The sight and sound of men going out to fight had roused far too many ancient memories. And for him, as for all very old people, memories had a way of standing over against--in some cases nearer than--present reality.

Jovan Ilić was no senile fool. Yet he had not lived ninety-seven years without learning that wisdom, too, can age, decay, and die. Very little had changed in the externals since his split with the progeny of Svetozar Savić; slightly improved weaponry, and a different foreign foe.

Still, there was a difference which ran much deeper. He was not sure exactly what it was, beyond the idea that things seemed so much more vicious, petty, and hypocritical now. There always needed to be excuses and personal agendas to make it all small and nasty, and endless pompous justifications for the benefit of nobody in particular. No longer could one fight simply because the fight was there--nowadays that would be considered barbaric and bloodthirsty.

Soon, he supposed sadly, no one would dream of settling a score except by getting lawyers. Luckily, he would not live to see that. No wonder all the songs were about the olden days.

It was as if some great spirit--gods, heroes, saints, call it how you would--had left the earth. He wondered idly what new tenants, if any, had moved into the abodes of the vilas, the fairies.

"No, it's not pretty, I can tell you," said a voice suddenly--a voice that scattered his thoughts like dead leaves before a bitter October gale.

The old man, stung, looked up to see the huge figure of Malibor Savić seated across the table.

"You!" he exclaimed, shaken.

"Aye," rumbled the giant. "It's me, you old stoat. Thought your work was done these forty-nine years, didn't you, me lying beneath the Vikoč crossroads where you and my son killed me? That's a deed I'll bet no one sings songs about, at least in your company."

"You're a dream," muttered Jovan Ilić. "You're nothing but a nightmarish figment of my imagination."

"I'm the Great Cham of Tartary," sniggered the other. His yellowish eyes grew round and wide as saucers as he took a breath and blew out the oil lamp.

The old man choked and fought for breath in the pitch blackness. He heard a scraping noise--the oil lamp being pushed aside--and then felt a big knobbly hand take him by the throat. "Still think I'm made out of rahi fumes?" came the grating question.

"No," gasped Jovan Ilić. "What’d’ you want?"

"First, some light. We've had forty-nine years of darkness between us. Let us see each other again, just for a little while."

A flame sprang up from somewhere, and the lamp was relit. Malibor Savić resembled his grandson Andrija, but his features were craggier and more drawn. His lips were weakened by lost teeth--as Jovan's were--but the resulting lispishness gave his voice a psychotic edge which sorted well with his legendary character.

"What I wanted," said Malibor Savić, looking slightly sideways at Jovan Ilić, "is you alive, up 'til now. Like the man says, dead hostages are worse than useless. For I am very patient; I have held you hostage, in a way, these seven sevens of years."

"Hostage?"

"While you live, I live—after a fashion. Don't you know how very intimate an act murder is? Someone you've killed is closer than a son, for a son grows up to find his own life. But a murder victim is dead. He has no life to take him away from you. He is closer than a lover--closer, even, than a wife. Yes! the marriage bond is dissolved with death, but the bond of spilt blood begins where marriage leaves off. Murder, my dear Jovan, is a sexual thing. We like to make it last."

"What has this to do with me now?"

Malibor Savić's voice fell in mock disappointment. "What, you, elder of the elders of Bosnia, and you do not know this?" he leaned over the table, his eyes widening again. "Revenge, my old wily fox--revenge, after seven weeks of years. This night, I say, you will pay at last, you and yours, and all yours, you hunted me from Uskub to Laibach to Bucharest for two decades. Was I not gospodar?!" he thundered, banging the table for emphasis.

"Your bloody work--" began Jovan Ilić.

"As gospodar, bloody work was my family trade, my duty, my station, handed down from generations more ancient than nations. And you, a groom, a—a servant, presumed to set yourself up in my ancestral place?!"

He paused, his face convulsing with rage; but after a moment he appeared to regain sufficient control to continue. "You never knew--you still do not know--what deep roots you tore out of the earth. You do not know the ruins and voids your murderous treason created, nor what crept in to fill them. My son hid his head in the sand. My grandsons—who had more balls--tried to stem the tide, but it cannot be done. Young Kosta finally understood that this very day, and has given in. Now the ruin is upon all of you. Now it all unravels. Now your bloody work comes to harvest, and I am here to witness the gathering!"

"Damn you to hell!" cried Jovan Ilić.

"You already had a go at that," cut in a cool voice. "So sorry."

Malibor Savić leaped up with an oath, and a flash and crackle of blue sparks sent him staggering. Jovan Ilić closed his eyes while Malibor sagged, groping for his seat, and whispered: "You are right. It is not hell. It is Judgment Day. No other event could bring me together with you two again."

The newcomer moved into the lamplight a little, the wan glow throwing her marble features into deep relief and setting a bone-white gleam on part of her hair. She extended a hand and pushed Malibor's forehead back.

"You," she said to him witheringly, "you and your righteous little snit! I suppose you were going on to claim that you were swordsman to earth's mild gods while they still sat in storièd Carcosa. Eh?"

Malibor Savić said weakly but defiantly; "He owes me for blood. Even you cannot change that."

She lifted her hand, letting his head roll forward. "And you, Jovan--where are your manners? Do not curse your guest."

The old man asked wearily: "Who have you come for, gospodja?"

"The seven weeks of years, as he was saying, is over," she replied. "But he had it wrong. It is time for you both to be set free from your debts."

"Free?" said Malibor Savić suspiciously.

"Free," she replied. “You were patient, but too patient. You let him hold out just a little too long--and now the jest is on you. It is jubilee, the forty-ninth year. So it is written--seven weeks of years clears any debt. You are free from your grave, and you, Jovan, are free to leave this life at last."

"Now--" began Jovan Ilić.

"Of course, there will be certain . . . consequences on the other side. You will both at last be called upon to render account for your lives and ancillary existence. But I do not doubt you will face up like men and Serbs."

"You can't do this--" protested Malibor Savić.

“It is already done.” The new arrival threw her head back, lifting both arms; the lamp on the table sputtered, flared, and burst into an unearthly blue-white incandescence that hurt the eyes.

Then all was dark, save for a brief afterglow like a twelve-pointed star which flickered and faded, leaving the old man's body slumped forward in his chair.


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Anyone accustomed to observing Colonel Fedor Slavin at the han, and especially the peculiar way he had looked up at people from behind his makeshift desk there, would have been struck by the very similar way that Velimir Ivancić was looking up from that same place now.

"Jovan, any news of Slavica from your side of town?"

"Not a trace," said Jovan Vuković, shaking rainwater off his cloak. "It's like she's vanished from the surface of the earth."

"Except, as we all know, that's impossible," replied the gaunt chieftain. "She--or at least her body--has got to be somewhere."

A peal of thunder interrupted the conversation.

"Radovan's not back yet," said someone. "God alone knows what he's dug up in that Croat priest's hive."

"Probably took them some time to get in," replied the knez. "Any news from Janko's men?"

"No."

"What if Janko was too late?" asked someone.

"Then Joro Djurić would just have to do his best further up. Look, don't think this is a real war. For God's sake, man, they have automatic rifles."

A man stuck his head in the door: "Somebody's coming." Within moments, the arrival was ushered in, streaming.

"What news, Aleksa?" asked Velimir, rising.

"We found the priest had left in a big hurry--everything all torn open and strewn around. So his departure wasn't planned. It was damn fast, though, and he packed very light."

"Light enough to take himself, by foot?"

"It's hard to be sure, but that's my guess."

"Any sign of the girl or the Turk?"

"Not of the girl. We found the Turk, or what's left of him. His head's off."

"Off?"

"Gone," explained Aleksa. "Verloren, as the Schwabes say. But there were dressed wounds about the body."

"H'm. Did you secure the building?"

"Posted a guard, like you said."

"All right. Good work. You can go." One by one, as time went on with no fresh news or messengers, the other men left or settled down to doze. Velimir Ivancić leaned well back and stared up at the ceiling, scratching the silver stubble on his throat absently.

"Knez Velimir? Begging your pardon."

He looked back down, surprised. "Yes, Ivo?"

Ivo Kopitar swallowed, licked his lips, and said: "This fighting--this fighting we're going on with--it's going to be big, isn't it? I mean, really big."

The new chieftain shrugged. "Only as big as it has to be. That depends largely on them. If you're worried about getting shot--well, that's the worst they can do to you."

"That's true," said Ivo. "I don't know why I asked. Good night."

"Good night, Ivo," said Velimir, a bit irritated. Then he sighed and slumped back in his chair, pulling his cloak up about him as if 24-hour SDO had been bred into his bones.


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